Requiem

Today, it is with a heavy heart that I post this entry. A great friend of mine has died. I have known him for about 4 years, and in that short time, he has enriched the lives of me and those of my family almost more than I can know, and certainly more than I could ever convey through simple words. This man, Ric Estrada, is an absolute paragon of the Celestial being. For those unfamiliar with the doctrines of the LDS church, this means that he is everything I could ever aspire to as I strive to do my best as I prepare to return to meet God. The things he has been through in this amazing life of his (and overcome) are things I will never have to experience, yet he has overcome them and flourished. He is a wonderful artist, storyteller, home teacher, mentor and friend. He has worked with some of the biggest names in the art world: Hanna-Barbera, Dreamworks, Marvel and DC comics and many others. His artwork fills page after page of sketchbook after sketchbook that I have had the privelege of seeing. He did many of the storyboards for 'Prince of Egypt'. Comic books were favorites of his. He had a whimsical nature that was apparent in all of his artwork. He was asked to be our home teacher; to come to visit our family on a regular basis to make sure that we were doing OK. When he fell ill this final time, and was not able to visit personally with us, he checked up on us by letters written in his own hand and liberally sprinkled with beautifully amazing little illustrations. These letters are very precious to us, and reflect the character of the man. When too ill even to leave the house, he was thinking of others. He had a keen mind for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and willingly shared his vast knowledge and love of it with all. His conversion story and testimony were precious beyond description. I am proud to have called him my friend. If he doesn't have his exaltation in the highest realms in heaven, there is no hope for me or anyone else I know. I have come to dearly love this man and I will profoundly miss him.

Hiatus

While a temporary hiatus for Floydshow grinds to its conclusion somewhere around mid-April, I decide to participate in a community theater production. Happens to be one of my favorite productions; I've done it before and had a wonderful time, so I anticipate having a great time again. Biggest problem is that it's in Lehi. Not that Lehi is a terrible place, but it means that I have to drive on I-15-AKA-freeway-of-doom again through the Pleasant Grove/Lindon curve at 6:00 or thereabouts. You know, the section of freeway that comes to a grinding halt every day for some mysterious reason that even UDOT can't figure out. The section of freeway that is personally responsible for my move from Eagle Mountain to Provo in 2003. As it turned out, I only got caught in the maw of hell a few times.
Anyway, the show is Smokey Joe's Cafe. Helen and I did this show a couple of years ago when the Pleasant Grove Players did it. We had a piano player, Helen on tenor sax and me playing bass guitar. We had a great time with it. My name was mentioned by a friend of ours from Eagle Mountain for whom Helen and I had played when they did Nunsense. MD Glen M called me and asked if I'd be interested in participating. I said yes pretty much on the spot, then asked about the dates. Turns out the dates were right when my wife and daughter would be in New York with the Provo High Chamber Choir. Helen was out. I was still in. About this time, a place contacts Floydshow to see if a gig could be arranged for the 3rd of April which was, coincidentally, next to last night for Smokey Joe's. Instant conundrum. Add to this, HCTO announces auditions for As You Like It, which would open on April 10th. Not a big temptation, except they also announce they are looking for musicians as well as actors. *perk* Now they have my attention. Like a dummy, I go and audition and get called back. I go to callbacks with a very peculiar feeling in tow; I don't know if I really want to do this show. It would be a lot of commitment right at the time when these other 2 things are coming up. I don't know if I just did horribly at callbacks, or what, but as it turned out, I wasn't cast. Can I just say, "Thank you, God" for that? Or whoever was responsible. After callbacks, I began to have weird feelings about the show. I didn't WANT to be cast, although I decided that I would go ahead and take the part if it was offered. Whew! I am really curious who they decided to cast and do the music. There were a lot of really great actors at callbacks, but not so much musical talent. To be sure, there were a few outstanding musicians, but seemingly not as many as they said they were looking for. Guess I will have to see when it opens.
Now here it is after the closing performance. The run is finished, and I am a free man for a couple more weeks until the Floydshow Hiatus is over. The gig for the 3rd never materialized, so it was not a conflict. We found neither a sax player nor another bass player, so I played bass for all the numbers except the 3 I played tenor in; the 3 the directors decided they HAD to have the saxophone in. It was all good. I found that I love playing sax in jazz bands, but I really needed to play bass for Smokey Joe's. We had a very good combo of musicians; Blair on drums, Steve on piano, Liz on keyboard and Jim on guitar. All of them were good musicians, and we were able to play well together. Really makes me want to do it again. The cast was awesome as well. It was a pleasure to get to know everybody involved with this production.

Pink Floyd Shows (Part 3, The Return)

Oh my heck! Remember the 55 MPH top speed thing? Well, I think that on the way home, we averaged 50 or less. In an RV that smelled of Febreeze and upchuck. Anyway...
We Left Lafayette sometime before noon, and headed north for I80. It seemed like it was all uphill and with a headwind all the way home. We got gas as we left town, and stopped in Cheyenne for gas, then we stopped in Rawlins (I think) then we stopped in Evanston. Come to think of it, it's a miracle we made any money on the trip the way the RV was guzzling gas. Lots of great sights along the prairies of Wyoming might I say. From the 300 or so windmills whirling away somewhere between Cheyenne and Evanston (I know, lot of territory there) to the tedium of being passed by 18-wheelers, it was quite a yawner for most of the trip until about 30 miles out of Evanston where we encountered a VERY long downhill grade, and we started picking up speed. A lot of speed. Jason was driving at the time, I was riding shotgun. He was white-knuckling it down this long grade as we flew by cars and semis and small animals all at 85 MPH or so with the Git-'er-done trailer flying along behind us. All in all, quite the high point of the trip home, until we got the Parley's Canyon and crawled past the jackknifed tanker truck at 5 MPH. We finally got into SLC somewhere around 11:00 PM, where we decided to all go home and worry about the offload another day.
The gigs were a lot of fun. It's a great group of people we've got involved in this band, with a lot of talent. We're going places now, just as long as we don't have to take the RV of Doom with us.

Pink Floyd Shows (Part 2)

We finished the show in Red Cliff really late and spent a while cleaning up the equipment and loading the trailer. By the time we were done, it was approaching 3:00 in the morning and I was very tired, to put it mildly. We got into our rooms across the street and quickly got to bed. The bed was really hard, but apparently it didn't matter, because I was asleep in seconds. The rooms were really nice, but they all had one quirk: they had a light switch at the door that controlled power for the entire room, including the bathroom. Once we figured that little quirk out, everything was good.
We ate breakfast the next morning in the grill and left town at about 11:30, expecting to get to our next show with a lot of time to get set up and get a sound check and everything. Didn't work out that way, of course. We got stopped for a while in Denver rush-hour traffic and lost for a few minutes, but eventually we made it to the next venue, a place called Nissi's in Lafayette, just East of Boulder. Nice venue, nice owners, small stage for a ten-piece band. We got all set up and got our sound check done with minutes to spare before opening time. Nissi's is a restaurant and music venue. They have nightly entertainment, and we happened to be that band for 2 nights. This is the web site for the club. Our performance started between 7:30 and 8 and we played for just over 2 hours with a short break in between. Overall, the show went well, minus one song screw-up and having the sustain pedal for the main keyboard plugged in wrong.
When we were done, we left everything there (since we were playing the next night as well) and headed for our overnight destination, the owners' cabin just over an hour from Nissi's. It was a gorgeous house built among the pines with great scenery and room for all of us to crash until we met the next day for the second performance, which went better than the first. Afterwards, we went back to the cabin for the night. We loaded up the trailer on Sunday morning and headed back for home, which will be the subject of the next entry...

Pink Floyd Shows Part 1

First off, I'd like to say thet there's nothing quite like riding to Colorado and back in an RV that has a top speed of 70 MPH downhill and with a tailwind. The cruising speed was more like 55 on the flats. The ride back was made longer by several factors that I may or may not go into detail over; suffice it to say the the RV spelled heavily of Febreeze on the way home.

The trip started out with a bad omen of sorts. I got a call from our keyboard player saying that they hadn't left Salt Lake yet, and that was about an hour after they said they were leaving SLC. Kudos to the guys, 'cause they were dealing with a U-Haul rental gone awry. Instead of reserving us a small, enclosed trailer for our gear, they had an open-air car-hauling trailer; apparently confusing us for classic RVers with a car. *eyeroll* Anyway, they pulled in to Provo 11-ish with a humongous trailer in tow with flames on the sides and "git 'er done" on the back. Not kidding! It was so large that we single-layered everything we had on the floor of it and had room for a couple more bands' stuff as well. We headed out and started toward Price on US-6 up Spanish Fork Canyon. Pretty uneventful stuff; several stops for gas and snacks along the way. Lots of getting passed by cars and semis. Finally got to the exit for Red Cliff, Colorado. Noticed the air was pretty cold, but didn't think a whole lot about it. Wound around a small canyon road with switchbacks for 10 miles or so, and came up to this:

But from the top of it. I thought we were going to get to cross it, but there was an itty-bitty turn-off just before the approach that we turned on to instead. That single-lane road wound around for a couple more miles until finally we got to a town that Park City, Utah must have looked like 50 years ago or so. A bar/club a hotel/liquor store/general store and about 100 houses scattered around the hillsides. Here's a look at the town coming in from the highway:

The building on the right is Mango's Mountain Grill which is where we played on Thursday night. The image of the town pretty much says it all, complete with all the snow on the hillsides. It was very cold, and of course I hadn't brought a jacket of any kind. Duh! Anyway, we got set up, ate dinner and were ready to play by about 10:30. We played a full set, and overall had a pretty good show.

Next: pushing on into Denver...

Lunch

On Monday the 5th, My friend Julie and I drove north into the next valley to have lunch with a friend of ours who is visiting from Arizona. We had a very nice visit and a very nice lunch at Zupas in Draper. I highly recommend the Thai Lobster Curry if you get the chance. They allow you sample any soup you want to before you buy, which is a real bonus. Not in a Sam's-Club-on-a-Saturday-in-place-of-lunch kind of way, but I am glad that they do that. I have several observations about the trip:

I don't see Julie nearly enough.
It was lovely to visit with Lisa
I work at a place that makes it somewhat difficult to take long lunches on a whim
Food is often more expensive than is comfortable to my budget
I don't get out with friends nearly often enough
I'm glad that my home and my work are about a mile apart; I couldn't commute a long way to work.

Today, as I noticed someone in the mens' room changing their clothes, a thought came to my mind: When Clark Kent went into a phone booth to remove the shirt/tie/pants/etc., whatever happened to those clothes? Did someone come to use the phone and say, 'dangit! What slob left these clothes all over the place?' Maybe he used the heat vision and vaporized them. *eyeroll* That would get expensive.

At least Underdog took care of the problem; the phone booth blew up, presumable taking the clothes with it.

With the advent of cell phones and the demise of the phone booth, where does Clark/Superman change now?

A lot of weird questions, I know. All brought to you by the rambling mind of JoesKnows© *smirk*!